


Dead Silence

by jeffersinning



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: A Quiet Place AU, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Deaf Character, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Grocery Shopping, Inspired by The Walking Dead, Zombie Apocalypse, a lot of people are already dead, kind of gory bc zombies, they call them lookers because i’m not that creative
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 19:47:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21754216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeffersinning/pseuds/jeffersinning
Summary: A devastating disease has sent the country into chaos, turning the dead into undead monsters who hunt by sound and smell.AKA A Voltron x A Quiet Place x The Walking Dead/Zombie AU that nobody asked for but here it is.
Kudos: 4





	Dead Silence

**Author's Note:**

> ive been binging so much of the walking dead lately and i still think a lot about my Deaf pidge/hoh lance college au so i’m back with a different au!!! i loved a quiet place bc millicent simmonds is so good and twd is p good too so i came up w this. so far i only have this one part written but if i end up doing more i’ll post it.
> 
> i tried applying a lot of the research i did and some of the feedback i got on above sea level but if you notice anything that doesn’t make sense definitely point it out to me! i’m not Deaf/hard of hearing at all so i learn through what you all share w me. i love realistic writing so help me out here. besides that enjoy! 
> 
> content warnings: language, gore, blood, violence, usual stuff associated with zombies. nothing overwhelming but if you’re particularly squeamish take care.

Katie never liked going grocery shopping with her mom. She loved her mom immensely, but the idea of aimlessly wandering through aisles of food products with a cart that wouldn’t steer straight for the life of her and checking items off of a list never really interested her much.

One thing she never realized though, was how _easy_ grocery shopping had been designed to be. Capitalism streamlined the entire process, ensuring that there was always a plentiful amount of food available at her fingertips, able to be placed in a cart and easily pushed around to the register, where the hardest part was putting everything in bags and bringing it back to the car, then back to the house.

But even that was a walk in the park compared to their current mother-daughter shopping trip. 

The grocery store was ravaged. Empty shelves were knocked over and crooked, with undesired foods left rotting to nothing on displays. They’d managed to set off a car alarm in the parking lot, which left the store mostly empty for them to shop in peace.

‘It looks like people have been taking food from here recently,’ Katie signed to her mother, gesturing towards a gruesome image of an arrow stuck in a Looker’s head, the blood trailing down its temple, thick, sludgy and most importantly of all, fresh.

The two stopped to grab a couple of cans and gently place them in their bags, wrapping them in stolen t-shirts. Katie was about to grab another can when Colleen froze, signing for her to stop.

The taller women’s eyes darted around, looking for the source of the noise. Katie frowned, her hand moving away from the can and reaching up to turn on the cochlear implant on her left ear. The battery was getting low, so she only turned it on in situations like these.

She heard nothing. These days, there was nothing good or bad associated with that. It was both a blessing and a curse.

Katie felt the footsteps, pounding into the floor with enough force that they had to have been heard by some of the Lookers nearby. Colleen grabbed Katie by the arm, leading her swiftly down one of the aisles, their shoes with makeshift padding attached to the bottom muffle the sound of their footsteps slippery on the tile floor. 

They almost came to a skidding stop as a Looker stumbled from around a corner, sniffing the air. It turned, nose finding the two Holt’s as the source of the smell. 

The snarl was fuzzy through her CI, but after the first one there was many. They began to drown out the sound of her heart pounding, but she could still feel it.

She heard a couple of claps, before a bow shot through the Looker’s head and sent it tumbling down to the ground. Further down the aisle, behind it was a boy, maybe a bit older than herself, with brown hair and tanned skin, holding a crossbow. He celebrated his shot silently before noticing the two.

He gestured for them to follow him, leading them deeper into the store. Katie shifted the heavy bag on her back, the shelves shaking as they darted past. One shook enough that a box of cereal went tumbling off of it, hitting the ground with a crash. Her mom and the boy shot around, eyes wide in horror.

A Looker rounded the corner in a rush to the noise, a horde following him. Katie panicked, sprinting away from it.

The chase was a frenzy. They ran through the aisles trying to avoid making more noise and lose the horde. Katie’s shoes were slipping wildly, and she cursed the padding on her shoes as she slid around a corner. Her senses were on overdrive as her eyes darted around wildly, trying to follow the boy, avoid the food on the ground, and ensure no Lookers would intercept them.

The smell of them was overwhelming, rotting and pungent, hungry and disgusting. She could taste the sweat dripping from her forehead to her lips, mixing with the grit and filth from days without bathing. She gripped the bag on her back with white knuckles, pushing ahead faster, her short legs overcompensating in energy to keep pace with the boy.

A Looker came out from the side, tacking her mother and ramming her into a display of chips. She felt the bags popping from the impact of the collision, shelves clanging and tumbling on her, setting the horde’s new course, sending vibrations throughout the room that seemed to make her body go numb.

Katie froze, watching her mother struggle against the grip of the monster. This couldn’t be it. She couldn’t lose them all.

The girl moved to go help her mom, only to be stopped.

“No!” Colleen shouted. ‘Go! Be safe,’ she signed, tears sparkling in her eyes. 

The horde was approaching, drawn closer by the shout. Another Looked jumped onto her mom, causing her to scream. 

Katie watched with tears in her eyes, signing ‘I’m sorry’ over and over until a hand grabbed her left arm. She turned her head, eyes meeting the boy’s. 

“We have to go.” It was inaudible to her, but she could read it on his face. 

She turned to her mom, or the pile of Lookers on top of her. 

‘I love you,’ she signed, before she was dragged off, into the back of the store.

Another boy met up with them, a tall boy who looked the same age as the other. He was heavier, but built like a tank. They said something to each other before leading Katie into a back room, blocking the door behind them. They gestured towards a flight of stairs and Katie went up.

The two boys blocked the roof access door, ensuring they wouldn’t be attacked. Finally allowed a moment of peace, Katie’s eyes scanned the black tar roof, noting a tent anchored by some bricks. That must have been where they were staying. She almost forgot that it was daytime, early in the morning. The sun was still rising over the horizon, the pink hue of the sky too beautiful for the reality of her life.

She ripped the towels attached to her shoes off in a fit of rage, throwing them at the ground with all the might she had. 

Her mom was gone. He brother and her dad were missing. She found her dog being eaten in their backyard by a Looker. She was alone now, in a silent world with strangers and no way to easily communicate with them. She wiped her eyes, not even realizing she had been crying. With a click, she turned off her CI, the white noise of the wind blowing past cutting off, replaced with dead silence. 

The crossbow boy grabbed her arm, eyes furrowed in annoyance. He said something, head turned so she couldn’t even try to read his lips. The taller boy tilted his head before tapping the other and pointing to her CI. 

“You’re deaf?” she could see the disbelief on crossbow boy’s face. “This —- — be - sick joke,” he said. 

Her throat was dry from thirst, vocal chords creaking from underuse. “It’s not,” she said, irritated by his reaction, recalling everything she learned in speech therapy. Out of habit she signed as she spoke.

He began to pace, speaking as he did. Katie rolled her eyes in annoyance. This kid had a lot to learn. “What’s your name?” she asked, causing crossbow boy to stop and turn to her. He said something but she couldn’t make out the name off of his lips.

“Uhh,” the taller boy seemed to scramble for a moment, raising his right hand. 

‘L-A-N-C-E,’ the taller boy fingerspelled out, stumbling on some of the letters before pointing to crossbow boy. He raised an eyebrow, and they had an exchange that Katie assumed was along the lines of “where did you learn that?”.

The taller boy pointed to himself before spelling out his own name. ‘H-U-N-K,’ he fingerspelled, before pointing to Katie and giving her a questioning expression.

“I’m Katie,” she said, doing her name sign and then fingerspelling it out to them, before holding out a hand to shake. The two of them nodded, accepting the friendly gesture. It was nice for a moment. It felt human. That was rare now. 

Things crashed down on her again, her slight smile falling into a frown. She stopped trying to read their lips.

Katie walked over to the edge of the roof, looking out over the parking lot. The car alarm her and her mother had set off earlier finally stopped. The lights were no longer flashing and she assumed the siren had stopped blaring, taking away the direction that the Lookers once had. They resumed their aimless wandering, bumping into cars and each other.

The spread of the disease had happened so fast. One moment Katie was holed up in her room trying to hack into the Garrison and learn more about the disappearance of her father and brother. Her mom sent her a text reminding her to let BaeBae out. She did as told, returning to let the dog back in after ten minutes or so only to see a dark figure hovering over the bloodied corpse of her beloved family dog, feasting on her flesh.

She panicked, locked all the doors, windows and closed the blinds, hiding up in her room and texting her mom in a frenzy. Colleen came home safely soon after from a grocery trip, allowing Katie to cry into her arm as they watched the news. 

The monsters were ironically referred to as Lookers. Whatever this disease was caused the human dead to reanimate, with a hunger for flesh and clouded over eyes rotting out of their head. Infection could occur with bodily fluid contact, such as a bite, and once the individual fully turned, it would cause rapidly progressing blindness as the disease feasted on the soft tissue of the host’s eyes. 

Since they were blind, they hunted primarily by sound, and occasionally by scent. Katie had a similar reaction to Lance upon learning this about the monsters, figuring she was doomed from the start. But after learning about what she did that made noise, her ability to communicate with her mother in ASL, along with her increased sensitivity to vibrations and widened range of peripheral vision, left her with arguably more advantages than disadvantages. 

It wasn’t like she was ever ashamed about being Deaf anyways. She was born like this, it was just how things were for her. Her family had been extremely accommodating, learning ASL and making all of the necessary adjustments around the house. Sure, communication with hearing people was more difficult, but it was possible. Lance and Hunk would learn, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted them to yet.

-

Lance watched Katie’s face fall, before she walked over to the edge of the roof. He was half expecting her to jump, considering only minutes ago she watched her own mother— he assumed, die. Instead she just stood there.

“I think we need to give her some space,” Hunk told him, sighing as he sat down on a roof fan. It creaked under his weight.

Lance tore his gaze away from the short brunette. “It feels weird talking about her when she’s literally right there. Is this talking behind her back?”

Hunk shrugged. “I don’t know. I learned the alphabet from a bookmark. I’ve never actually met a Deaf person before.”

Just another challenge. Add that to the pile, like another corpse to burn.

“This is so fucked up,” Lance said walking over to their tent, dropping his crossbow and laying down on the ground. He stared up at the sky, pink wispy clouds floating lazily by. “Why are we even alive, out of all of the people here?” he asked, breathing in the morning air. It smelled like rotting flesh.

“A few weeks ago, I was sitting at home on my ass playing Killbot Phantasm and now I’m basically playing it in real life.” Lance rolled over, laying on his stomach and looking up at Hunk. “I was home alone, everyone else was out. I was safe. Everyone else died, man. They’re all out there, just stumbling around aimlessly. Out of my entire family, I’m the one who survived. I saw. Before we met up, they were just in the street.”

He knew he was rambling, but he couldn’t help it. The survivors guilt was something he just couldn’t shake. Every time he thought of his family and the life he had before that day, he felt the guilt crushing his chest, threatening to squeeze the air out of him. To make him pop.

“There are so many things you can ask about why they are the way they are,” Hunk said pensively. “But sitting around thinking isn’t going to help us survive. This is real, this is us and this is now. We have to make it through this,” he urged Lance.

Lance sat up, looking over at Katie. She lowered her head and walked back over to the two, signing something, eyebrows raised. 

“You know neither of us can understand that,” he said almost bitterly, annoyed that she wasn’t just speaking to them. He knew she could, she just did, even though it was kind of hard to understand. It was easier than playing this dumb game of charades.

She gave him a deadpan look, repeating the sign, eyebrows raised again. Hunk was watching her with intense focus, as she signed something else that Lance actually understood. 

She shook her head ‘no’ while doing a sign, before holding her arms out in front of her and moving them up and down, like how the Lookers walked around. 

“No Lookers?” Hunk interpreted aloud, taking the words right out of Lance’s brain. Katie nodded, repeating the sign from earlier. She crossed her arms across her chest and held them out, before pointing down at the ground.

“Hug here?” Lance guessed aloud, rambling off possible meanings. “Cold here?” He thought for another moment. “Safe here?” He received a nod. “I like this game!” Lance exclaimed in excitement. There was a growl from below as a Looker listened in on his mini-celebration.

“But uh, yes, it’s safe here,” Hunk told Katie, spelling out ‘yes’ as he did so. She did a sign and spelled ‘yes’ again after. “That’s the sign for ‘yes’?” A nod.

Lance watched the two with gears turning in his head, as Katie seemed to be teaching Hunk a couple of signs. How many times had they had close calls with the Lookers when they were trying to communicate out on the field? Too many. In stressful situations he had the tendency to yell, which was unfortunate given their situation. Even when they were successfully hiding, he worried that their whispers were too loud and would get them found out. 

“Hey wait Hunk,” Lance said, waving his hands to get his friend’s attention. Katie glared at him in annoyance as he interrupted them. The Cuban ignored her as he put an arm around his friend, turning him away from Katie so she wouldn’t be able to tell what they were saying. “What if we got her to teach us sign language?”

Even Hunk gave him a deadpan expression. “Lance, what do you think I was just doing with her?”

“Tell her she can stay if she teaches us some signs!”

Hunk pulled away in disgust. “No way, no, I am not theatening her!”

“So we’re just gonna trust her like that?” 

“Excuse me?” Hunk’s brows were furrowed in annoyance. “You’re the one who brought her up here in the first place. Are you going to just kick her out like that?”

Lance bit his lip. “I mean... We don’t know what she can do. I guess her knowing ASL is an advantage, but if she can’t hear anything she’s doing, isn’t that a liability?”

The taller boy was disgusted. “So you want to ditch her? Throw her off the roof and feed her to those things? She’s Deaf Lance, not stupid.”

“How do we know that for sure? We just met her!” He flailed his arms around in emphasis. “All I’m saying is that we don’t know enough about her yet to be able to trust her.”

Hunk sighed, chest rising and falling deeply. He didn’t like arguing with Lance. Or anyone for that matter. “So what do we know about her?”

Lance shrugged recalling the events following his first encounter with the girl. “She was with her mom, gathering food. We were being chased by a Looker, and a cereal box fell. A herd got her mom, so we were able to get away.” He paused to think about other things he noticed about her. “She has a hearing aid but I guess she turns it off to save battery or something. She can speak but uh, not very well, and um. Can she read lips?”

“I don’t know, Lance. Does she have any weapons with her? Supplies?” Lance shrugged. He really didn’t know shit about this girl.

Said girl stomped in annoyance, startling the two other boys, whose heads snapped around to face her. 

‘I know you’re talking about me,’ she signed, irritation radiating from her. ‘I’m not stupid.’

Lance watched her sign, the meanings behind her movements more obvious than he had initially thought. If he looked closely, he was able to figure out what she was saying. His parents had always said he had a gift when it came to communication and expression with people, but he hadn’t really noticed it until now. 

“Sorry,” he said with a gulp, now noticing her laser-focus on his mouth as he spoke. Her thick eyebrows furrowed slightly, her big amber eyes narrowed as she seemed to repeat the word to herself silently. Katie huffed, finally setting her big bag down and perching herself on a fan with a pout. She looked almost bird-like.

Lance decided to take a nap, the events from the morning wearing on him. He had been up most of the night thinking about his family, and how they were still out there, though infected. He had thought about killing them then, and putting them out of their misery, but he hadn’t been able to do it. He just abandoned them, leaving them to wander the streets of their once colourful neighborhood in the majority-Latino part of town. 

When he awoke, he blearily opened his eyes to find Katie animatedly conversing with Hunk. She looked excited, almost happy for once, as she signed to him. It sounded like a strange one-sided conversation, with Hunk speaking, pausing to sign some words and spelling out words he didn’t know the signs for. Katie would teach him the sign, and then they’d continue on with the conversation. There was one word that Hunk kept mentioning that Lance knew well.

“Did I hear Killbot Phantasm?” he interrupted, climbing out of the tent and walking over to where the two of them were sitting. Katie was on the same fan as before, but she looked more comfortable, less defensive. Her expression seemed to sour slightly at the sight of Lance. 

“Yeah! I was just talking to Pidge and it came up,” he gestured to the girl, who avoided eye contact with Lance. 

“Pidge? Is that a nickname or something?” Hunk nodded.

“Uh. It’s like this, right?” he asked, tapping the girl on the shoulder to do what Lance assumed was her nickname sign. 

Said girl did the correct sign and rolled her eyes at Lance.

“Hey, what’s your problem?!” The Cuban shouted, pointing a finger at Katie, who shot daggers at the boy and looked away. “Why do you talk to him but not me?” He stomped over to her, grabbing her arm. 

“Lance!” Hunk shouted before Katie gut-punched said boy with her other arm. He doubled over in pain, only to get shoved by the small girl again. She was stronger than he had initially assumed.

‘Don’t you ever touch me like that again!’ he could see the anger on her face, her skin tinged red with rage as she signed, breathing out the words with a slight growl. 

Lance heaved, nodding and catching his breath. Hunk kept repeating the same sign over and over. ‘Sorry.’

-

Katie’s hands were shaking as she took a walk over to the edge of the roof. This was stupid. It was so stupid, her mother and her had been fighting so much to stay alive, and now she was gone. And then she gets in a fight with the only other people she meets that are willing to provide her with safety. Why was she doing this? Was it grief? Anger? 

She watched Lookers wander around sniffing the air and probably not smelling anything besides themselves. There was a slight wind, allowing the scents of the survivors to blow off into the air. It left her bangs hanging in her face, and she brushed them away.

She cut her hair after the first time her and her mother had to fight a Looker once they ran out of supplies at home and had to go out scavenging. It was then when she realized that nobody cared if she had her hair long or if she wore her brother’s old clothes or not. It was all about survival now.

Katie sighed, having cooled down. She walked over to where Lance and Hunk were bickering. Hunk seemed to be trying to teach Lance the alphabet. They stopped and turned to her, waiting for her next move.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said to them, sighing after. ‘I’m just... tired.’

“Hey, it’s fine,” Hunk told her, smiling as he signed ‘ok’. “But... uh. We have to work together if we want to survive.” The combination of signing, spelling and speaking was clumsy, but it worked. Everyone understood. 

Katie nodded in understanding, looking to Lance. He still seemed a little ruffled, but he was looking down at Katie. 

‘I’m sorry,’ Lance signed. “I was —-, I’m s—-. Friends?”

She nodded slowly, taking his outstretched hand. 

Lance smiled, before turning to Hunk. He began to speak, but Hunk gestured to Katie as he did so. Lance paused, trying to sign as he spoke. Hunk helped him with words he didn’t know.

“We’re low on food.” He admitted to her. “We were down scavenging but ran into you guys. Couldn’t bring anything up.” 

‘There’s a couple of cans in my bag,’ she told them, gesturing to where her pack lay on the ground. ‘We should probably wait the night, since there’s probably a lot of Lookers lurking around inside from earlier.’ She signed slowly, hoping they got all of that. 

“We need water though. We haven’t drank since yesterday.”

Oh. Neither had she, that was funny, she almost forgot. 

‘Are there any drinks downstairs?’ she asked, hoping that they wouldn’t have to go far to get anything. Lance thought for a moment, probably trying to remember what he saw downstairs. Katie had been too panicked to actually notice.

“Yeah there’s some juice.” He recalled. The grocery store had been overrun early and a lot of the food had been left untouched by the panicked masses, instead left only to those brave enough to go scavenging within it. But even just that had reduced the shelves to almost nothing a few months into this. Most of what was left was too noisy to risk or rotten. “Hunk and I will go down and get it, it’ll be quick.”

‘I want to help.’ She knew that she’d probably encounter whatever was left of her mother down there, eaten or undead, but she didn’t want to be useless. Anything but that.

“We’ve done this a ton, I can make it down and back in like five minutes. I just need Hunk to guard the door to the back.” Lance proceeded to walk over to pick up his crossbow, and Hunk got up from his fan.

‘Let me go with you,’ she demanded, following Lance and drawing her knife from her pocket. ‘I can watch your back.’

The boy sighed, defeated. “I guess you can come.” 

Hunk quietly opened the door for them, leading them down the stairs and to the blocked back room door. The three of them peered through the window, trying to get a good look at what was out there.

‘I only see four,’ Lance turned to face the others, mouthing the words and signing to them.

‘Five.’ Katie corrected. She was half ready for Lance to argue about it, but he accepted her correction.

‘Ok, whatever. If we’re quiet we can probably sneak to aisle two, where the juice is, and come back. Just uh. Don’t make any noise.’

She gave him a deadpan expression, as Hunk began to slowly move the plank of wood they had barricading the door. Once it was free, he sprayed the hinges with some kind of lubricant before cautiously opening one. 

Katie followed Lance, who swiftly moved through the aisles, obviously taking a roundabout way so they wouldn’t run into her mom. They reached the juice aisle without incident. A bottle of fig juice was left on the shelf, turned on its side. Lance went to pick it up when a knife went flying at his head and he ducked just in time.

“Hey!” he exclaimed, before slapping a hand over his mouth. He turned to see the knife-thrower and seemed to widen his eyes in realization at the black-haired boy and his tall, muscular accomplice.

‘You know them?’ Katie asked, stepping into Lance’s line of sight.

“I’d know that mullet anywhere.”

**Author's Note:**

> a few things you might be wondering:  
> \- yes the disease is similar to the one in twd where everyone has it  
> \- only the brain/head injury kills the lookers  
> \- ‘ is for asl and “ is for speaking or in lance and hunk’s case until they learn more, speaking and signing. too much description of whether they’re speaking or signing or both takes away from the dialogue so assume after the point when they all start cooperating that that’s their default unless someone’s (lance) stupid and forgets.  
> \- u know that mullet, he’s coming  
> \- there’s no ships so far but idk i’m plance trash so that’ll probably happen


End file.
